Multifaceted We: 1. Denial

It was said that catastrophes were needed to wake us up. There was no shortage of catastrophes in this past century. Waves of death and destruction came continuously, feeding on each other’s momentum; only becoming stronger. And yet we continued sleepwalking.

Collapse, entropy, chaos: many names were given to me. I was always there and will always continue to be. I often feel unseen.

I sparked fear, excitement, and manic laughter. I was; even when invisible. Hidden under beds, lurking in bodies when hearts fluttered.

It hurts to be ignored; to be feared.

Being caged was part of me. My multifaceted selves make me, me. Sometimes it scares me; and so, I cage/get caged. The worst type of lie (the one you tell yourself). As if my essence could ever be caged.

From my womb came life and death. The inseparable twins of existence; one and the same. For a long time, we have known how afraid we are of death. We have tried to trick it, avoid it, ignore it, and set it aside. In vain of course. A deep truth that has more often than not been concealed is that we have been just as afraid (if not more) of life.

Life is multiplicity, complexity, uncertainty: entropy; we. We tried to contain it, to contain ourselves. But it is uncontainable. We tried to control it. But it is uncontrollable.

We did not notice that to stifle one of the twins was to set free the other. Every time we ruled out life, we set death free.

All of this fear, the confusion that inevitably arises from my being leads to denial. We denied what we could not understand.

We could feel that this situation was dismantling; earth-shaking. We did not want to give up our ideas of what life was; of who we were. It was easier to ignore the parts of us that caused discomfort. Like taking a painkiller; getting rid of the symptom but not of the cause.

What we denied was that all that we feared was what constituted what we were in the first place. Without chaos and change there is no life — no us. Without it there would be no earth to shake.